Cricket 1896

84 CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. A pril 23, 1896. New South, Wales beat South Australia twice and Victoria once, and lost to Victoria. Victoria won one match and lost one with both N.S.W. and S.A. South Australia beat Victoria once and lost twice to N.S.W. and once to Victoria. Played. Won. Lost. N.S.W....................................... 4 3 1 Victoria ............................... 4 2 2 S.A...................................... ... 4 1 3 The average per wicket for and against each team in these matches wap as follows :— For. Against. Runs. Wkts. Aver.Runs. Wkts. Aver. N.S.W. ... 2181 61 35-75 ... 2027 76 26‘67 Victoria... 1898 76 24*97 ... 1952 70 27 88 S.A. ... 1578 70 22 54 ... 1578 61 25*86 It will be noticed that South Australia, although last, dismissed her opponents a trifle more cheaply than either New South Wales or Victoria. This was largely due to the extraordinary improve­ ment manifested by Jones, who came to the front by leaps and bounds, and who may after all do as well as even hisgreatest admirers predict in England. On his form of the last Australian season, he is certainly a great bowler. The pace he always had; and now he seems to have mastered the art of keeping a length. Some extracts from a letter received yesterday, from one of the leading cricket critics of Australia, anent the team may be of interest here:— “ England is indeed wonderfully strong now, and there is a hard time in store for Giffen & Co. No doubt you were sur­ prised when you read the names of the team. Everybody was. It is strong; but there are points about it one cannot quite like. For instance, there are so many new men, both batsmen and bowlers, that success is very proble­ matical. Jones, on his recent form, reads all right; and McKibbin w ill,-I think, improve and be dangerous, but he has a lot of off-days. . . Graham will not, I think, be as great a success as he was in ’93; but Harry Trott should do well, and so should Donnan and Iredale. Eady I have not seen since he was a youngster. Darling is one of my fancies. He is so resolute. A real Scotchman. Full of tenacity, and with no fine sensitive nerves in his composition. Trumble will, I think, be the best all­ round man in the team, despite numerous critics. Trott will, I fancy, be skipper. Giffen proposed him for the match v. Combined Team. . . I am afraid of the bowling, and would like to see Howell in—not Turner. . . Hill must surely go. I regard him as a phenomenon. What price 206, not out, v. N. S. W., and 74 yesterday, v. Australian Eleven ? ” My correspondent adds that Giffen’s eyesight has been troubling h im ; and that he is scarcely the great George of old. “ His management of the bowling during the recent South Australian visit to Melbourne and Sydney came in for such severe criticism, that whatever chance he might have had of being elected Captain, was largely discounted. But, from what one hears of Harry Trott’s ability in that direction, one doubts his being any better than Giffen. Why not Trumble ? No one seems to have suggested him ; but he is the one other man in the team eligible for the post. Graham and Gregory are too young; and the others are all new men.” The mention of Jones led me off at a tangent. I have not yet quite finished my remarks on the late Australian cricket season. It was a heavy-scoring season on the whole. Iu the nine first-class matches played, 306 wickets realised 8,064 runs— an average of 26.35 each. In only two matches—Victoria v. Tasmania, and the second game between Victoria v. South Australia—was the scoring low ; while in no fewer than five of the nine over 1,000 runs were scored. These were:— Match. At. Aggregate score. N.S.W. v. Victoria ... Melbourne 1,353 for 40 wkts. N.S.W. v. S.A............ Sydney ... 1,201 for 31 wkts. N.S.W. v. Queensland Sydney ... 1,070 for 31 wkts. Victoria v. N.S.W. ...Sydney ... 1,048 for 36 wkts. Victoria v. S.A.Adelaide 1,032 for 40 wkts. The winning side is in each case placed first. An analysis of the 29 completed innings results as follows:—Four of 400, and over; eight of 300, and under 400; seven of 200, and under 300 ; eight of 100, and under 200; two of under 100. Of incom­ plete innings there was one of 245 for eight wickets, one of 207 for Bix, and one of 173 for one wicket. Those of the totals reaching 400 were due to New South Wales—485, v. Queensland, 428, v. South Australia at Sydney, 407, v. Victoria, at Melbourne. The other—400, v. New South Wales, at Sydney, was due to South Australia. Victoria’s highest was 357 in their first innings in the Christmas match at Melbourne. Nine batsmen each scored a century. They were:— C. Hill .......... 206* S.A. v. N.S.W. ... Sydney E. A. Iredale 187 N.S.W. v. S.A. ...Sydney H. Donnan ... 160 N.S.W. v. Victoria Melbourne A. Coningham 151 Queensl’dv. N.S.W. Sydney E. H. Walters 150 N.S.W. v. Q,ueensPd Sydney J. Darling ...121 S.A. v. N.S.W. ...Sydney J. Harry ... 107 Victoria v S.A. ... Adelaide H. Graham ... 103 Victor.a v. N.S.W. Melbourne C. McLeod ...100 Victoria v. N.S.W. Sydney * Signifies not out. No fewer than six of the nine centuries were made on the Sydney ground. Three are claimed by New South Wales bats­ men, three by Victorians, two by South Australians, one by a Queenslander. I must say something in reply to Mr. George Laoy’s criticism. With a good deal of what Mr. Lacy has said from time to time on this subject I agree. If he has read my other articles he will have gathered that I do not con­ sider the M.C.C. an ideal judge in these matters. Furthermore, I may tell him that I was among those who supported with all their power the claims of such counties as Derbyshire, Warwickshire, and Essex to first-class rank for some time before tardy justicewas done them in 1894*• But to me it seems that there must be a line of delimitation somewhere. To say that all matches arranged by a first-class county are ipso facto first-class is much more absurd to my mind than even the arbitrary rulings on account of which Mr. Lacy falls foul of the unfortunate journalist. The reductio ad absurdum is the best way of showing this. I think the following arguments are logical de­ ductions from Mr. Lacy’s standpoint;— (i ) Any match played by a first-class county is, ipso facto , first-class. But a side playing first-class matches is neces­ sarily a first-class side. Therefore any county which plays a first-class county is itself first-class. (ii.) Warwickshire was undoubtedly a first-class county in 1895. Warwickshire played Cheshire. Therefore Cheshire was first-class. (iii.) Cheshire played Worcestershire. Therefore Worcestershire was first-class. And Worcestershire played Staffordshire, Oxfordshire, Durham, and Hertfordshire. Therefore all these counties were first- class. And one or the other of these counties played Lincolnshire, Bucking­ hamshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, and Berkshire, from which it follows that these five were also first-class. (iv.) Also Bedfordshire played Wilt­ shire, Buckinghamshire playedNorthamp- tonshire, Norfolk played Cambridgeshire; and Wiltshire played Monmouthshire, Monmouthshire played Glamorganshire, Glamorganshire played Herefordshire, and Herefordshire played Shropshire and Breconshire; Cambridgeshire also played Huntingdonshire. (v.) Wherefore there were at least thirty-four first-class counties in 1895; and the only counties which put teams into the field at all, and did not come within the first-class category, were Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset, which, not connecting with the chain anywhere, were merely minor counties. And if all this is not absurd, I fail to see what could be. For this reason I cannot agree with Mr. Lacy that all Maurice Read’s scores for Surrey should count. I maintain that Read’s figures, as given by me, were as accurate as they could well b e ; and I question Mr. Lacy’s assertion that Somerset was not ranked first-class in 1885. To the best of my memory and belief, Cricket, the Sportsman, and Wisden, all ranked Somerset as first-class in that year. Myself, I don’t often go outside these three authorities. Mr. Lacy is wrong, too, in asserting that the M.C.C. decided that Yorkshire v. Liverpool and District was first-class. It was the Press who called it first-class in 1894. In 1895 the M.C.C., on being appealed to, decided that it was not; and it was left out of last year’s averages. I think it should have been included, also that Surrey v. Scotland should have been; and I have said so plainly before now. But I cannot agree with Mr. Lacy in his extremely elastic definition of first-class. Its adoption would result in confusion a hundred times worse than what could possibly happen under the present system. Herefordshire v. Herelord Cathedral